As the leader of your company, can you make sure that your successors are good enough for you to leave without serious mishaps? Here to answer this conundrum is C. Lee Smith, President and CEO of SalesFuel. Lee is the creator of several SaaS platforms for business performance, which include: AdMall, the industry leader for local advertising and digital media sales intelligence used by over 2,000 media properties across America; SalesFuel COACH, data-driven, adaptive sales coaching for time-starved managers; and TeamKeeper, a SaaS-based program for improving company culture, communication and retention.

Human personality plays an integral role in a company’s day-to-day operations, and the subsequent interplay of complex behaviors can make or break your profit margins. What if you could skip all the guesswork… and hack the code to efficiency? Ulrik Lork, a specialist in coaching, communication and leadership training, explores the wider implications of various curiosity assessments. He specializes in collaboration and has worked with top organizations in Sweden in the United States, Norway, Japan, Australia, and Switzerland.

It’s important to ask questions but how do you know when you’ve asked too many? Michael Bungay Stanier’s answer is you can never ask too many questions when you have a genuine intent of knowing instead of just trying to prove a point. On the flip side, questions can come as drive-by interrogations which sometimes make the person give advice as an answer. Michael believes that the moment you start to give advice is the moment you start controlling the conversation. Learn how you can stay curious longer to ask the right questions and generate sound advice.

I have worked with educators in schools and universities across the United States since 2006. My experience includes teaching, speaking, mentoring, training, program review, and curriculum design. My goal is to help educators succeed and make a difference in the lives of students. As a successful educator, coach, national trainer, and speaker, I promise to motivate and inspire educators through my on-site school training and district keynotes. I share practical, proven strategies for immediate use in classrooms. Continue reading “Stop the Madness with Top Classroom Management Techniques”→

Myers Briggs MBTI personality assessments are often utilized by organizations. In today’s Wall Street Journal, the article Do You Get an ‘A’ in Personality discussed the importance of utilizing personality assessments in family situations as well.

Greg Cellini from WSOU 89.5 FM interviewed me recently about this very topic. One of his questions Greg had for me was if using the MBTI was helpful for families. It definitely can be. The reason is that a lot of misunderstandings occur due to the fact that many people don’t realize “why” other people do the things that they do.

By understanding personality preferences, we are more likely to be tolerant of others. In the audio clip that follows, Greg Cellini and I discussed the difference between the J and P personality types. For those of you unfamiliar with Myers Briggs, there are a lot of articles you can access on this site. The J personality is someone who is very structured and on time. If you tell them to be somewhere at a specific time, they’ll likely get there early to be sure they are not late. The P personality is more spontaneous and less structured. If you tell them to be somewhere at a specific time, they’ll likely get there on time but may wait until the very last moment. By realizing that the opposite personality functions the way they do for a reason, frustration can be avoided. For more about this, check out the excerpt from the recent radio interview that follows.

If you have not taken the Myers Briggs assessment, I highly recommend doing so. You may find out some valuable things that could help you with your relationships at home and at work. In the article from WSJOnline.com, they noted that in order to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator you can “Go to MBTIreferralnetwork.org to find someone to administer the test. You also can take it online and receive a one-hour telephone feedback assessment for $150 through the Center for Applications of Psychological Type at www.capt.org. Or take a computer-scored version of the test at MBTIcomplete.com for $59.95. When family members take personality tests, their self-awareness goes up and they quickly figure out their strengths and weaknesses, says John Williams, a life coach in Portland, Ore., who uses a test in his work with teenagers. “People realize they are different from other people,” he says. “The personality test becomes a road map.”

If you can’t afford to take the actual Myers Briggs MBTI, check out this link to help you discover your personality preferences.